Antidepressant Drugs, Mental Health, and Chemical Castration

Was 2016 a watershed year for antidepressant drugs? Or should it have been? Is any defence for them now being available for prescription by the conventional medical establishment?

Or have doctors prescribed dangerous drugs for so long now they have got used to the idea of damaging their patients? After all, as I wrote in March 2016, the doctor's medicine cabinet is getting emptier by the day! Doctors are now working under considerable constraint when they want to prescribe blockbuster drugs like painkillers and antibiotics - as a result of the well known dangers of these drugs.

Yet antidepressants are now facing similar concerns about their safety, especially during the current epidemic of mental health.

The mental health charity, Mind, undertook a piece of research in 2012, surveying more than 1,000 patients who were taking antidepressant drugs. It revealed that over half of these people were not warned by doctors about the possible serious side effects, notably to their relationships, their work, and their social life. The study show that

• Over 60% of antidepressant users felt the medication had a negative effect on at least one aspect of their social life.
• 44% reported an effect on their sex life.
• 27% said it affected their work or study.
• 23% said it impacted on their social life.

Plenty there to get depressed about! Indeed, one of the most notable side effects of antidepressant drugs is depression! Anyway, the doctors magazine, Pulse, has recently covered this story again, and they quoted Dr John Read, professor of psychology at the University of East London.

     "People taking antidepressants need to be warned about these effects, which can be very upsetting, especially in people who are already experiencing depression."

So, five years after their research was published, Mind is calling for better support for people on antidepressant drugs, to help them cope with their potential impact, as well as better training for GPs and prescribing nurses. It is part of the charity's ‘Find the Words’ campaign. They say that mental heath care staff have insufficient training to cope with this important task, and that they have an incredibly difficult job to do, under enormous pressure. Pulse goes on,

               "The evidence that serious and long term ADRs resulting from SSRIs, SNRIs and other psychotropic drugs have been hidden from prescribers by both pharmaceutical companies and regulators continues to accumulate." (My emphasis).

In other words, doctors have been prescribing antidepressant drugs without knowing the full adverse reactions patients might experience! Pulse goes on to talk about the 'slight of hand' in pharmaceutical sponsored, ghost written clinical trials, which have "been categorised and documented".  Indeed, a comment made to Pulse from a hospital consultant makes an incredible admission!

               "... the "apparent lack of prescriber awareness of a damming and expanding ADR evidence base" (perhaps even a widespread denial) seems to contrast with the growing patient insight into such serious adverse experiences as Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction. (PSSD."  (My emphasis).

So doctors are claiming that they have not been made aware of the side effects of antidepressant drugs, even though I was blogging about their dangers over 5 years ago! The evidence about the harm antidepressant drugs cause has been around for a very long time, but as usual the conventional medical establishment,has met this evidence by ignoring and denying it.

Indeed, the situation has been more than just 'ignored' or 'denied'. Prescriptions for antidepressant drugs for children rose 54% between 2005 and 2012 in the UK. The World Health Organisation (WHO) said in early 2016 that it was very concerned by the rise in use of antidepressants in children in particular, both in the UK and other countries which it said was ‘not justified’. Prescriptions had increased 60% in Denmark, 49% in Germany, 26% in the USA, and 17% in The Netherlands.

And the hospital consultant then raises another issue, specifically about SSRI antidepressants, that doctors are are using these drugs "as part of the Ministry of Justice's on-going program to roll out a voluntary chemical castration program for certain categories of convicted sex offenders".

               "Two types of medication are available to treat sex offenders. The first are known as SSRIs -commonly prescribed for depression, anxiety, and obsessive compulsive disorder. They help govern activities such as eating, sleeping and sexual activity".

So this is what we are being asked to believe by the conventional medical establishment.

• The nasty side effects of antidepressant drugs have been known about for many decades, but they have been ignored and denied, and doctors have not been told.
• The prescription of antidepressant drugs, with their nasty side effects, has grown exponentially, especially in the last 20 years, including young, vulnerable children and young people.
• Doctors, one part of the conventional medical establishment, who have prescribed these drugs, now claim in their defence that they were unaware of their nasty side effects.
• Conversely, other doctors, involved in the management of convicted sex offenders, themselves part of the same conventional medical establishment, DID know about the nasty side effects of antidepressant drugs. Indeed, they are knowingly and intentionally using them to produce one of the nasty side effects!

There is a stunning duplicity of the most serious kind, bordering on criminality, here. People with depression have been given antidepressant drugs by doctors who now claim they have not been made aware they can cause chemical castration. So innocent patients have not been told. Even if this was so it points to unacceptable professional incompetence, and gross negligence.

On the other hand, convicted sex offenders are given antidepressant drugs by doctors who are quite aware that they can cause chemical castration. I wonder if these patients are aware of the intention of their doctors? I wonder if the criminal justice system is aware of what they are doing?

Now, let's have a show of hands. 

Who trusts the conventional medical establishment?

Who wants to entrust their health to conventional doctors?

Antidepressant drugs have failed

Antidepressants have failed, according to a study undertaken by The Lancet. The study, published on 8th June 2016, provides the following summary.

          "The careful study by Andreas Cipriani and colleagues in The Lancet1 has disturbing implications for clinical practice, concluding as it does that the risk–benefit profile of antidepressants in the acute treatment of depression does not seem to offer a clear advantage for children and adolescents”.

This is not new news, except for the conventional medical establishment, who always cling on ferociously to their failing drugs and vaccines for as long as they can. I wrote about it in February 2012. The ineffectiveness and dangers of antidepressant drugs have been known for a long time now. It has only been the 'risk-benefit' game that doctors play that have saved them, skilfully done by exaggerating the benefits, and discounting the risks.

So if the Lancet headline is that antidepressant drugs have failed, will this be the end of them? This is extremely unlikely. The article itself says that 'there is no cause for therapeutic gloom'. And as with their other failing drugs, notably antibiotics and painkillers, doctors will continue to prescribe them, if only because they have nothing else any more effective or safer to offer patients (and talking therapies cannot cope with the numbers involved).

It is also unlikely that patients on antidepressant drugs will be told. Although this is important information, necessary for any patient who wants to make an informed choice, conventional medicine is well practiced at hiding information they do not want us to know about. It is highly likely that this study will be quickly forgotten.

Moreover, we can now expect the pharmaceutical companies to pay for their own 'science' which will seek to overturn this study. Their cheque-books are large enough to ensure that (so-called) medical science will come up with the findings they are looking for! Antidepressants will be found to be more effective than we thought, and less dangerous too. This is exactly what happened to HRT treatments since they were found to be far too dangerous to prescribe in 2002!

The conventional medical establishment will roll on, regardless of the evidence that they are not treating disease effectively, and are actually causing harm! Iatrogenic disease has never worried them, or indeed taught them anything!

Notwithstanding, the evidence of conventional medical failure is building, bit by bit. There will come a time when some politicians will realise what is happening to conventional medicine, and be brave enough to ask just how much more money conventional medicine needs. There may even come a time when our hapless mainstream media decides to inform its readers, listeners, viewers, about a dominant, almost monopoly system of medicine is failing, and explain to us why it has been allowed to dominate our lives, without question, for so long.

Doctors and dangerous drugs. Is their medicine cupboard bare?

The doctor's magazine, Pulse, recently published an article "50% hike in antidepressant use in UK children". (9th March 2016).  The increased use of antidepressant drugs for children, 'according to an international study' was actually 54%, and this rise took place between 2005 and 2012.

The Pulse article said that the World Health Organisation (WHO) was ‘very concerned’ by the rise in use of these drugs in children .... which it said was ‘not justified’.

However, this increased use of antidepressant drugs is not confined to Britain. Similar increases (60% in Denmark, 49% in Germany, 26& in USA, 17% in Holland) were recorded over the same period.

The Pulse article tried to defend GP's by pointing out that the increased prescriptions were made by 'secondary care specialists', but also added that that there was rising pressure on mental health services which led to British doctors being forced to prescribe.

Yet doctors have known about the dangers of prescribing these drugs to children for many years now. In 2005 I wrote this about antidepressant drugs.

          "In the UK nearly all antidepressants were banned for children in 2004, due to the increased risk of suicidal ideation. The USA however, still allows children to take these deadly, mind-altering drugs."

So even when conventional doctors are told that pharmaceutical drugs are dangerous they continue to prescribe them! Why do they do this? Do they not know that the drugs are dangerous? Do they forget the instructions given to them by drug regulators? Do they not care about the damage caused to patients?

Or could it be that the pharmaceutical cupboard getting bare?

There are signs of increasing desperation in the activities of the conventional medical establishment. If doctors cannot use antidepressant drugs, what can they do? If talking therapies are not available in sufficient quantity, owing to demand, do they have anything else to offer?

So is the mental health epidemic now so large that it is forcing our doctors to prescribe drugs that they know can be harmful to patient health?

The failure of conventional medicine is manifesting itself in many ways, but two in particular are worthy of note here.

• Disease epidemics are stretching conventional health services, not only in mental health, but for conditions such as autism, arthritis, ADHD, allergy, cancer, diabetes, dementia, and many other diseases (all of them, by the way, caused at least in part by pharmaceutical drugs).
• The failure and ineffectiveness of pharmaceutical drugs, such as antidepressants, and the paucity of any viable alternative for conventional doctors.

Most of the drugs that conventional doctors have relied upon for years are now no longer available to them, including two of their old stalwarts, antibiotics and painkillers.

Antibiotic drugs

Just as doctors are now prescribing antidepressants drugs to children when they should not be doing so, they have done the same with antibiotics drugs for decades. One by one resistance has built up rendering them useless, and now there are only a handful that are still known will work. For decades doctors have prescribed them. For decades, drug regulators have told them not to do so. But conventional doctors have had nothing else to offer patients, nothing else that worked. Conventional medicine is in a state of panic about the imminent total demise of antibiotics.

Painkilling drugs

Similarly with painkillers. In September 2013 I reported on 'The Failure of Painkilling Drugs'. This blog was triggered by another 'Pulse' article, written by a doctor who said that GP options for managing persistent pain had declined markedly over the past decade, but that crisis point had been reached. As I commented at the time, 

          "The GP goes on to talk about the rise of fall of co-proxamol, selective Cox-2 inhibitors, and traditional NSAIDs. And now, she bemoaned "the safety of yet another analgesic called into question, especially the one most often prescribed". She refers, of course, to Paracetamol."

The sad fact is that conventional pharmaceutical drugs either do not work, or they no longer work safely. And the sooner we realise this, the better it will be for all of us.

So what do doctors do, when faced with sick patients? They give them whatever they have, and increasingly they are drugs they know full well to be not only ineffective, but unsafe, harmful to our health.

The saddest fact, however, is that the conventional medical establishment cannot be honest with us. Instead of our doctors saying to us, "Sorry, I have nothing to give you, our drugs no longer work, or they are dangerous" they prefer to continue giving us ineffective and/or dangerous drugs.

It is a sad reflection of the medical profession, who are still thought to be, by many people, the most honest and trusted of all professional groups.